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Monday, July 16, 2012

Glaxo Advertising Fraud Settlement with the U.S. Not Enough Says Public Citizen

We reported earlier on the $3 billion settlement between GlaxoSmithKline and the U.S. government over charges that the drug company fraudulently advertised a number of its drugs, including the diabetes drug Avandia, which has been linked to increased risk of heart attack and stroke. In this July 2 statement (sorry, I should have caught this earlier), Public Citizen Health Research Group director Sidney Wolfe explains why the settlement doesn't do enough to punish Glaxo for its illegal conduct and, therefore, won't do enough to deter similar behavior in the future. The basic problem, Wolfe says, is that the settlement doesn't take away all of the profits that GSK earned from its illegal drug promotion.

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More needs to be done to fight fraud and defeat money laundering, the British Bankers' Association said today on the second day of its crime prevention conference.
Finance professionals gathered today to learn the latest techniques to counter the fraud and money laundering which finances much of the world's organised crime. But to mount an effective attack on criminals the banks need support from the Home Office to put financial crime at the top of the agenda.
There is a website which tell you who call you, http://callnotes.org
BBA Chief Executive Angela Knight said:
"We are not crime fighters but we do fight crime regularly and effectively. By cutting off the funding of organised crime by stopping large-scale frauds and money laundering schemes, we prevent major crimes at the very first stages of their development."
"Yet financial crime does not feature in the list of priorities the police has been given by the Home Office. We now need more support to be more effective and we urgently need the Government to make fraud and financial crime a priority for law enforcement."